Rosemarie Rossetti,Ph.D. - Embracing Accessibility in Hospitality and Tourism
It's a privilege, truly, to be here. This program has been customized for you. Sharing my story, my background, my experiences.
I've been in a wheelchair since 1998. Accessibility matters not just to people like me with mobility challenges, but people with other types of disabilities, be it their senses or their mobility, or their ability for cognition and thinking. Not only does accessibility impact people with disabilities, but it impacts everyone around.
Their families, all the generations that are still around. All the people they work with. Accessibility not just benefits people with disabilities. It benefits us all.
And as we think about living life without a disability, how long will we live until disability becomes part of our life. I need to share with you my back story then to understand how I ended up in this wheelchair. It was June 13th, 1998.
My husband Mark, who was on the camera back there. Um, we were on a bicycle ride celebrating our love. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. There was no wind, no rain, no storm.
We were riding together on a wonderful bike trail. You've probably been on these trails. It's an old railroad track that's been turned into bike trails. When suddenly Mark heard what he thought was a
gunshot. He slowed down behind me. And then I heard him. Look over there. Something falling.
Stop! There was nothing I could do. In an instant, I was crushed by a 7,000 pound tree, followed by live power lines. It's a difficult transition.
Life in a wheelchair. I spent the summer of 1998 at Dodd Hall at The Ohio State University and Rehabilitation. And then two more years, three days a week in physical and occupational therapy.
Spinal cord injury, broken neck, broken back, broken sternum, broken ribs, broken spirit. Trying to figure out now what? Could I travel again? Could I speak again? What about my house? Would that work for me anymore? All those questions coming around to haunt me. What are the advantages of accessibility? Each one of these on the screen resonates, I'm sure, with many of you. One of them I want to share some of the most recent research. It is hot off the press.
In fact, this is a warm sheet of paper. It's so hot. This data just came upon me, and I said, I need it for this conference to share with you.
You've probably not heard of the new data. Have you heard of the Open Doors organization? Any of you have heard of that organization? Open Doors just released their new study and here it is. In the past two years, 25.6 million travelers with disabilities have taken a total of 76.9 million trips and spent almost $50 billion dollars.
Open Doors organization. You should be able to get this study pretty soon. If not contact me and I'll send it to you. In the past two years, 31% of adults with disabilities have taken a flight on a trip.
Amounting to nearly 13 million air travelers, taking 25.4 million air trips. Generating $10 million dollars in spending. Is there an advantage to reach this market when people with disabilities? I think this is part of the data, part of the story. And in terms of enhancing the reputation of the company and branding.
If you're going to a restaurant, don't you recommend it to other people? And then don't you put on social media a picture of what you ate sometimes. So you're promoting accessible restaurants. You're telling friends and family to go there. You're spreading social media. You're enhancing that company's reputation. And so if you can't get into a restaurant because they're steps and you're in a wheelchair, you just roll on by and say, "I'm not going there".
The same with any little boutique or retail shop or bakery or coffee shop. You just roll on by. Legal compliance. Of course, in this country is the ADA, and they're risking a lawsuit, a complaint, some problems with the US Department of Justice. The improving of the customer experience. I'm going to use a company, Walmart.
Probably shop there before. About a year or so ago, Walmart came up with a great idea to increase the customer experience of people on the autism spectrum. They have quiet hours in the morning where they turn off all the TVs and all the music, and it's a very quiet experience. They did the data collection found that indeed their profits were growing because of this.
And now they want to increase these quiet moments for shoppers because it's attracting more people. It just felt like, I want to be in Walmart when I don't have to hear all of the audio that's going on, all the music and all the TVs on their monitors. So it is a customer experience. The other company I'd like to bring attention to, and many of you have probably gone there.
Starbucks. Starbucks is one of my clients. They hired me to be on the accessibility consulting team to make it a better experience, not just for the customer, but also for the employees. And if you're in Washington, DC at the Starbucks near the Gallaudet University, you'll see the new Starbucks, which is now the inclusive model that Starbucks is using going forward. As you know, Gallaudet University is is the university for the deaf. So what did they do in this Starbucks? Sign language is known by most of the employees. The manager is deaf.
What you'd like with your service dog on the door when you come in, you know, you push buttons and waves, usually. Oh, no. They have a total vertical bar that even a dog can push with its nose to open that door. They've got special low counters with knee space there.
They changed the coffee machine so it makes noise to help people that are low in in hearing to hear that. So they know what stage that coffee maker is. So it improves that customer experience. And now they're using it throughout all the Starbucks as they make modifications and moved it.
They lowered the ceiling, put special acoustic tiles in again to enhance the customer experience. Is that a competitive advantage? You bet. Yesterday I got an email from Disability Scoop, their newsletter. Uber just announced they have training videos for all their drivers so that they know what to do with service animals.
Wow, would that be great to be able to call an Uber, have a service animal and not have to argue, "this dog is not too big for your car". Uber also announced that now will be able to identify yourself if your vision is lower or blind, or if you have low hearing or deaf. The driver will know when they pick you up. That just came out yesterday that Disability Scoop Newsletter. Competitive Advantage? What's Lyft going to do now? Now that Uber came out with their accessibility standards.
Safety for all, who wouldn't want grab bars in a hotel? Who wouldn't want them in a restroom situation? Accessibility benefits everyone, not just the people with disabilities. I like this one. Your most vulnerable customer is your most valuable customer. That's the person that is going to be helping with the economic driver. So if we see the trend, I guess we are at a tipping point right now here in the US. The tipping point is people are aware that they need to do a better job with accessibility.
And it's a powerful economic driver to make modifications so that more people can purchase their products and services and have a more equitable experience. The number of people in this country. You've probably seen the data is about 1 in 4 people have a disability in the United States. Those who can't walk or climb steps in the mobility category.
Those who can't remember make decisions think clearly the cognitive. Those with some hearing loss or deafness, and those with vision loss or blindness. So we do have a large population and it is growing as we're aging. Disability touches everyone's life eventually. You probably all know someone, if you're not with a disability.
I've already identified people here that have disabilities that you would not even know they have a disability. Disability does touch people's lives and they're not always apparent. Their hearing aids, there's contact lenses. There's the traumatic stress disorder. I have identified people in this room already by talking to you. There are people with disabilities that you just don't see. And here comes the problem. Because people don't know you have disability.
They don't recognize that you need some special attention. So if you go into an accessible restroom that's labeled as a special part of the theater, that this particular room is only for people with disabilities. And you're in line there and you don't look like you're disabled. Do the other women look at you differently? You know, you can't always judge a person by the physical appearance. The woman in front of me had a colostomy bag. She needed that restroom just as much as I did, and she felt kind of odd in that line with other people with invisible disabilities. So what are they?
Here they are. There are a lot of non-apparent, invisible disabilities that people acquire. They may have acquired from birth, and they may have acquired them as they continued to live. So realizing we need to move forward. So, what does it feel like when you arrive at a destination that's not accessible? Many of you in the room have had that experience where there's a step for us.
We can't get in. A door that's too narrow, we can't get through there. The shopping experience, another situation where I'm trying to purchase clothes and I can't get through the aisles or the item I want is way up here. I can't reach it. So how does it make you feel? To me, it makes me feel very excluded. The. The symbol here is you're locked out.
So I went to a very famous hotel chain in Denver, where I was doing accessibility consulting for a client that was having their conference at this hotel. So we went into the front of the entrance. They had the rotating doors, and those aren't very accessible for a wheelchair user. I can't get into most of the rotating doors. It's pretty obvious, right? So there has to be a swing door or another door entry to this hotel. So we went up to the door and it said "accessible entrance" on it. Great.
So I started to pull the door and I realized the door is locked. That's how I feel. The accessible door was locked. So my client went to the revolving door, went up to the front and said, would you unlock this for our accessibility consultant. She can't get in. So of course we had to ask.
Why was this door locked if this is your accessible entrance? Here's the answer. For security purposes. We don't want the homeless in here.
Not a good answer. Not a good answer at all. My client was livid. We've got to work on exclusion. Mark and I this summer had a 17 day tour of London, England. A beautiful mix of vacation and leisure trip for pleasure.
The new word was "bleisure" trip. Business and pleasure. We had heard that the accessible restrooms, they call them toilets there.
They're looking for toilets in England, all through the UK. Here it's restrooms. There you look for toilet signs.
So we're like, okay. Mark had researched this before and said, "it says here on this website that you need a special key to get into the accessible toilets". This is it. I brought it from London. You get into the zoo, you look at the toilet area. There's a special room that says "accessible toilets".
You take the handle and pull it. It's locked. And I'm at the zoo.
And I didn't have the key, and I had to go bad. And I'm like, what is this all about? The accessible toilets are locked. This started in the early 1980s in the United Kingdom, so the accessible restrooms were cleaner. But it is an exclusion practice, even though possibly they had good intentions to keep vandals and people that were just going to not treat it with respect.
But every time I went somewhere, I found the door locked to the accessible restroom. Fortunately, there was a woman in line behind me that saw that I couldn't get into the zoo restroom and she goes "do you have the radar key?" I said "no, I don't have a radar key. We tried to get one at the pharmacy and they said they don't have them, and they didn't know where I could get one." The woman had one in her in her purse.
She goes "here this is the one she gave me. She goes, "here, take mine. I've got another one at home.
You deserve to have this while you're in London." Exclusion. I go into this modern shopping mall as soon as I rolled in at the information desk. He goes, "do you have a radar key?" Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to use the restrooms in the mall, either. It's exclusionary practice. It's got to stop. And then restrooms that are just not big enough for me to get in.
They've got to be more accessible. I'm so happy. I live in the US. I came home and I'm like, "oh my gosh, I go into any restroom, there's a whole bunch of stalls. One of them is going to be accessible. I don't have to find a separate little room with a special secret key." So if the world were more accessible our
disabilities are less limiting. That's what we're trying to do. To make everything easier. To make life easier through some adaptive design principles.
So as you're knowing about accessibility, if it's not accessible, it's not inclusive. We argue that when we build our home. We were certified by the US Green Building Council to be a green home, and there was nothing there about accessibility. I go, "how could our home be sustainable if you can't even get in it? It's got to be accessible." And so we're looking at compliance and regulations and requirements with the ADA.
It is a human right. It is the equality, this justice. And it has been around since 1990.
But we want to go beyond ADA. We want to go beyond compliance. We want to look at making people feel that they belong.
That's the word to use BELONG. To be inclusive. Here's something else to look forward to. I wish it was ready today, but current news is not ready till a few weeks from now.
Go to visitdenver.com in a couple of weeks maybe it'll be ready. I worked with them. Their new slogan, "You Belong In Denver." And they're going to have a whole new landing page from the accessibility. Mark and are working with them.
I asked them when I speak this morning, "will you have visitdenver.com new accessibility landing page ready yet?" Nope. Not yet. So look look forward to seeing that "You Belong In Denver". At the human rights and the Department of Justice is where all the complaints go, where you go to court or you get mediators or you get fines. No one wants that to happen.
So tell people that you'd like to have them make corrections for problems. Otherwise you will file a formal complaint. Have you heard of universal design? Is this term familiar to you? It's like you're shaking your head. That's why we build a home with universal design. The Universal Design Living Laboratory at UDLL.com. Feel free to go there and take a look at our home. With a virtual tour.
You can actually play a game on a virtual tour. Our cat is the photobomber, and you'll see a little orange cat throughout the virtual tour. But this man, Ron Mace, is a person who is credited with terming the term "universal design". He had polio as a child.
He used a wheelchair and he was an architect. And he assembled a whole bunch of other smart people together to come up with the definition. And that's where you're taking your attention. Usable by all people, not just people with disabilities. So when you see our house, you'll see multiple heights of counters. So that I can use the 30 inch. Mark can use the 40 inch.
Everyone else that is not disabled and pretty average in height can use the 35 inch counters. So we don't have to make special adaptations. It was in the design of the property firsthand. Did it cost more to design properties with universal and accessible design? Not usually. In fact, the data that I have is it's maybe 1% difference in terms of building a home from the beginning with these design features. However, retrofitting that's a different story.
In terms of tearing out walls and making it so that it's step free. And changing countertops, making the bathroom big enough. Putting in a curbless shower. Those costs money. So Universal Design is not the ADA. However, the ADA has the minimum standards and that's what we're following in terms of accessibility is the baseline for universal design.
So we're looking at lever handles. We're looking at the height of the counters. And we're looking at the reach, so that 50% of things in our kitchen are reachable from a seated position. So ADA is the minimum standard. We're going above that. So it's universal design inclusive design? I think it is.
So I consider whenever I'm talking about universal or inclusive design that there's synonyms. And so you're familiar with the ADA in terms of grab bars, restrooms, and accessible seating in a theater. That's fine and dandy.
But we want to look beyond just people with disabilities, but serving all people with inclusive design. So it is going beyond it. It's a framework and it's user friendly, a very safe environment. And so as we're looking at universal design, for example, if I'm going to a store to buy a bag of chocolate and I want the chocolate that has orange flavor.
Do they have all the orange flavors where I can't reach them? And then I go, "Wow, I really wanted a bag of chocolate with orange flavor. Now I can't get to it." A smarter way for universal design display at retail is to display the orange in a vertical fashion on the shelves, so you have a whole vertical row of orange, a whole vertical row of reds, whole vertical row of salted caramel. Does that make sense? So thinking in terms of Universal Design.
That's another example. You ready to roll with me? I'm going to take you on some of my trips. Um, take you to some of the the bleisure trips that I've had. The first is Experience Columbus, where I live. They hired Mark and I to work with them on their new website. This is their landing page.
So go to experiencecolumbus.com. And this is what you'll see right now. The fall fun in Columbus. You can see the accessibility guide is there highlighted. So you click on that as a visitor to Columbus.
And you go well what does Columbus have for accessibility. And here's what we've done. We have in the middle a picture of Mark and I at Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. Just as some place keepers to say Columbus is a good place for accessibility. And here's what the guide looks like. So we have organized it.
So you have four categories at the top. So if your visitor has mobility challenge, they'll go to the mobility one. If they have vision, hearing or cognitive, they'll go to that category to help drill down into what is accessible destinations in Columbus. I also wrote blog articles, so there's three of them there that I've written for them, showcasing what Columbus has to offer to our visitors in the 14th largest city in the country. And then it goes into the accessible parks, accessible transportation, accommodations and hotels, and the attractions. From there then it goes into let's look at the Columbus Zoo.
Now. It drills right into the landing page of the Columbus Zoo for accessibility. And now we can highlight, "well, what does the Columbus Zoo have for accessibility?" And it then captures different categories. So you're seeing the different policies and the sensory kits that they have people on the autism spectrum. You're seeing if you need a special accommodation, how to get a hold of them.
Their service animal policy. And their wheelchair and scooter rentals. How much they charge if you meet one for the day, and how you can get a scooter or a wheelchair while you're there. And then it goes into the sensory maps and social stories and finally the accessible routes and the adult changing table. That is the one that I see more often not present in destinations. That should change immediately.
We need adult changing tables. Not everyone has a baby to change. They have adult children or family members that they're tired of changing their clothes on the floor of the restroom. We need to impact that.
Here is the changing area at Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. So you go there, you see the sign is there. You can push the button and the door will open automatically. Once you're in, you can lock the door
automatically and that is the changing table. It is adjustable in height with a push of a button so people can find that comfortable. It also folds back against the wall so it's not in the way. Now, we decided to go to Google Maps and see how Google Maps is a helpful aid. So if you're looking for a restaurant in Wilmington, as we were the other night, we go, "Hey, Google restaurants near me". We have it set on our phone on settings, and maybe you
haven't done this yet. On your Google Maps setting, go to accessibility so that when you ask for a restaurant, it will showcase them the accessibility of the parking, the entrance, the restrooms. So that's been very helpful as we're traveling to say, Let's look at what is going to come up with the universal symbol for accessibility. So just for fun, we decided to look at our house. "Hey Google, look up the Universal Design Living Laboratory." Is it accessible?
And of course it is. And its symbol was right there and then it showcased the entrance of the parking for accessible on our house. Oh, so fun, fun things. Little tips.
Accessible parking. We need those wheelchair van spaces at 16 foot space so that we can get out of our vans on our own. I was at the Palm Beaches and they hired me to go to West Palm, to Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. And this was the Flagler Museum. It's 102 years old. And I'm like, "really, this is going to be accessible?" it was totally accessible all through the museum, inside and out with appropriate ramping.
And then we went to London, 327 year old Saint Paul Cathedral. I thought for sure that's not going to be accessible. How are we going to fit it in that major historic building? Wrong. The architects figured it out.
It was a beautiful ramping situation, with handrails. Under the handrails were little lights so that they lit up at night. I was there with other travelers, with wheelchairs, and we all seamlessly, equally got into the cathedral. And able to go into the sanctuary with a little portable lift that they had installed and put up there for people that wanted to go up there. So it can be done in older buildings.
It's just a matter of thought. The Aronoff Center in Cincinnati. We were hired to work with them on the performing arts area.
And then I just wish more people would put the signs on the doors for the accessible stalls. I tired of going to an airport restroom and there's only one person in the whole restroom. She's in the accessible stall. It's like, "don't you know that's accessible stall? Why are you in there? Now I have to wait for, you know, 13 other stalls, you know. Why'd you pick that one?" And she comes out and she's got a piece of luggage. It would have fit in the other stall just as
well. I'm assuming, again, maybe she didn't have a disability. My assumption. But put some signs on the stalls. That's my recommendation. And then the door swings out.
Not in giving you more space. Two hooks on the door. Plenty of room inside with great grab bars all around. And a toilet that's easy for me to transfer to.
Great washing stations for your hands. Knee space. When I travel, I like to go kayaking, so I need accessible, places. Level surfaces, in this case this was gravel, but the wheelchair was able to roll over there and get onto the kayak. This was in West Palm Beach. Mounts Botanical Garden. I found that to be very accessible also.
And I love to bike in my three wheeled recumbent bike. And in this case it needs to be a pretty flat surface and well paved so I can roll on it easily. The mats that take you over sand. That's another, benefit for accessibility.
But I got to go to Lover's Key in Florida. A nice name for a place to go. They had free beach wheelchairs. That was the first time that I was on a beach in a wheelchair. It was just a really amazing experience, having never been able to get on a beach for decades.
Finding this lover's key as a state park in Florida. So where do you get the money to do the work? It's going to cost money. It's going to course personal. It's going to cost time. There are taxes, incentives and deductions available to you. There are business loans of low cost that you can get through the Small Business Administration. Many of your
financial institutions also have accessibility loans. And your local businesses have accommodations and grants. The second one is why not get a corporate sponsorship or a corporate partner to help you. Or get a nonprofit group partner? Why don't you write some grants so that you can get some funding from local government? Our Franklin County Developmental Disabilities Organization had $5,000 grants to ten people who wanted adult changing tables. That was a wonderful use of $50,000 that they got and distributed to any destinations in Franklin County that wanted to put in an adult operating table.
And the crowdfunding. You can get money that way too, to help with accessibility. So if I call you to action, you have the power. You in this room of anybody in Wilmington, Delaware right now. This is power center for being able to be an advocate, to being able to invest, to raise awareness and then to work with the disability community.
Nothing about us without us. That's my home. That's my website. Feel free if you'd like to take a virtual tour. If you'd like to connect with me. Rosemarie@RosemarieSpeaks.com.
My other website is just simply RosemarieSpeaks.com. We now have reserved a few minutes for you to make comments, to ask questions. And there is a roving microphone so that your voice can be heard. I'm looking for somebody that wants to start
this interaction.
2024-11-26 14:23
